


lux aeterna

by CosmicTurnabout



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Death, Despair, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24810031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmicTurnabout/pseuds/CosmicTurnabout
Summary: Short pieces and thoughts about the Flood of Light that devastated The First, and its aftereffects.
Kudos: 6





	lux aeterna

the light comes on little cat feet, but it eats through all in its path like a ravenous lion lost in the desert, thirsty, wanting, seeking. 

there are people standing in the streets, and they watch with wide eyes as the great white tide comes in and washes over, washes through, scours their bones and hearts and souls and makes them new and whole and terrible, creatures to strike fear into the hearts of men. 

the first is all but devastated. the land is but parched earth, all that makes life bloom is sterile and unmoving, blessed and pure but also static and dry. the certainty of shade becomes a distant memory, a thing wished for, and nothing else. who was ever afraid of the dark? 

a boy of seven summers watches the light through his window, and it’s like the stars are coming down to dance on his fingers, like a dream he had once, and he holds his hands up in greeting, smiling, laughing, and the blanket of light, kind and hollow, devours him whole.

***

  
as the light envelops, it also transforms. the light comes on with its million eyes and its white flames unknowable and uncompromising. it is cold, more the opposite of the sun’s warmth than shadow itself. the sun is no sister to this. 

the light bleaches bones and skin and burns away the solid outer shell surrounding the pulsing lamplight of the soul. to the soul, the light whispers. blessed by the light, corrupted by it, myriad souls fly into the empty wave, and become greater than themselves, less than nothing. from the firefly pinprick in a chest, the only thing the light does not swallow entire, a new form unfolds, clawed feet unrolling like cloth from a distaff, wings branching out with feathers long as plumes on a bannerman’s helmet. the people of the first touched by the light are wholly novel things now, with no names. 

there is a miracle; the light halts, but not without its share of carnage. there are survivors—there are always survivors—and they call those who were once their kin “sin eaters.” they put out grave markers for mothers and fathers and sons and daughters on the sands of amh araeng and the rolling grasses of lakeland. when there are no bodies, there is no use in digging, but even when the world ends, memory does not. 

people rebuild, and they remember. they say the gods see every sparrow fall, but when the gods close their eyes, the people make do.


End file.
